I am learning latin and helping my 6 yo son with his latin too. Yeah, a bit young, but he chose it.

For me, I have Wheelock, and for my son we did Prima Latina. I have just bought a new book for him, that's in French, our mother tongue. Well, surprise... The declension cases are NOT listed in the same order!

As someone with experience (aka an older person), it doesn't bother me too much, but it can seriously screw up a youngster trying to learn declensions.

In French books, it seems the latin declensions are listed as
Nominative
Vocative
Accusative
Genitive
Dative
Ablative

I'm totally taken aback by this. I sorta expected that, after a millenium or so, this would have been standardised.

How is it in other languages?

Anyone with suggestions to avoid getting my son so mixed up he will give Latin up? That's not the goal...

It's a curse, isn't it. In England we use the same order as the French one you list (NVAGDA). It was introduced here in the late nineteenth century. It does actually have some advantages, because the similarity of NVA in many declensions makes for patterns that are easier to memorise. And some disadvantages too, of course.

If you want stuff in English that sticks to the same order as the French, anything from the UK will do.

Cleo wrote:Does that mean the NGDAAV is an american approach? Or what?

Almost. That's the order used in Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar (1903), though I don't know how widespread.

The standard order in the USA, and I believe among the Latin grammarians, is Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Vocative, Ablative. I know, it doesn't make sense, but there it is. It is used in American books on Latin, Greek, German, and probably other languages, though, of course, Greek and German have no ablative and German no vocative.